Holy Grail - Part 1a - a little side note...

Dear Reader,

I concluded the first blog about the Holy Grail by asking you to keep in mind the name Joseph of Arimathea.  But before commencing the journey of trying to identify what is referred to as the ‘Holy Grail and trace its alleged route to Europe speculating about its current whereabouts, it is befitting to go little bit deeper into the significance of the shedding of blood to both the Jewish and Christian religion.

 Central to the basic belief of both religions is the fact that the fear of death had been broken by the shedding of blood.  In the case of the Jewish religion, when all prior plagues failed to persuade the Pharaoh to let the Jews to leave Egypt and to free them from the bondage of slavery (Exodus 7:14-11:10) God instructed Moses and Aaron (Exodus 12) to tell the Jews to form themselves into extended family groups and each group to take a lamb from its flocks to be sacrificed placing the blood of this sacrificially slaughtered lamb on the door post of all Jewish homes so that when the ‘Angel of death’ sees the blood it will pass over Jewish homes and proceeds to kill the first born male of every Egyptian home starting with the Pharaoh. 

The celebratory meal of  Passover is the meat of this sacrificially slaughtered lamb, the paschal lamb, cooked, dressed or roasted. A paschal lamb whose blood the Angel of death recognised and passed over saved the first born male of every Jewish family from certain death. So what each Jewish family is doing at the celebratory meal is gathering around the table of the Lord eating the body of the Lamb of God.  In the first blog on this subject I quoted the Eucharist that is central to Christian masses - ‘Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you for the forgiveness of sins – Drink from this, all of you; this is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins’.  Eating the body of Christ, the paschal lamb and drinking the blood result in the forgiveness of sins thus saving the believers. The very same result that the blood of the paschal lamb spilled on the door post of Jewish homes and eating the meat of the carcass of the lamb achieved for the Jews.

There are lots of books written about the four gospels, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John -that are the central pillars of the New Testaments - that tells us by way of narration each Apostles' version of the life of Christ. Narrations are not history and this can be observed when one reads what each of the Apostle had to  say about central events in the Christian calender year. When one keeps in mind that each of the Apostle is a pious Jew that attended synagogue in which the High Priest read the Old Testament or Torah from scroll, it would not be hard to see that what each of the Apostles had narrated are the events that are in the Jewish calendar  year.  Some of those writers go as far to say the Christian calendar year is an embellished copy of the Jewish calendar year.  That is not the subject matter of this blog – perhaps future blog.

Meantime having now established the significance of blood of the Lamb of God as a blotting out the sins of believers and conquering death the quest for the Holy Grail which contained the blood of Christ takes its proper meaning and the historical importance of the quest for the Holy Grail. 

I will conclude this blog in the same manner as I concluded the first blog on this subject matter by asking you dear reader till next time to keep in mind the name Joseph of Arimathea.